a horse in striped pajamas: Muir Woods story

Today, I visited Muir Woods for the first time. It was hella crowded. A spring Saturday is not the optimal time to enjoy the cathedral of a redwood forest but I had a rental car and I was in Marin today.  I'm glad I went, of course. I've seen redwood trees before, but Muir Woods is special.

Remember the scene in the Wizard of Oz where some apple trees throw apples at Dorothy and her gang? Trees in movies talk back. And I felt like those redwood trees, some of the oldest anything on this planet, had a lot to say. To me, to all of us.

So the visit was joyful reverence for the holy forest. My visit was intermittently an experience of grief.  I felt all the many groves of ancient forest clear cut for greed.  I thought "well, people used wood for fuel and home building". Then I thought "If we had been mindfully reverent regarding every choice ever made to use the earth's bounty, we might not be overtaxing the earth."

Maybe humans could have made all kinds of other choices. They could have said "Nature is our home, our sacred land, we must protect it. Let's build stucco homes from mud and straw and save as many trees as possible."  You know, a fairy tale. Human civilization could have lived in harmony with fairy tale wisdom, lived in harmony with the supersensible realm.

if you are asking yourself 'what is the supersensible realm', go to the oldest forest you can, on a day when few others are in the woods and feel the earth, the trees, the plants, the creatures of the day and night. Listen to an old growth forest, if you are lucky enough to be near one. An old growth forest, and all the beings and plants and mushrooms, which are not plant or animal, will talk to you. Not in words. Redwood sorrel talks like redwood sorrel. Turkey tail mushrooms growing on a fallen, dead piece of redwood speak a language of their own. It is our responsibility to listen.

This is what indigenous cultures have done for millenia. In spite of the capitalist, dominator rapacious encroachment, indigenous cultures have hung on to some of their wisdom. And they possess the wisdom to restore culture and nature if capitalists would stop dominating.

Whatever. I'm running out of gas with the grief I felt for nature today, and for human civilization. We've fucked up.

I thought, in Muir Woods, of an old tv show broadcast in Chicago when I was a preschooler and my mom let her kids watch it because it was educational. My mom was pretty strict about exposing her kids to tv but she bought the marketing that "Captain Kangaroo" was education. Once Sesame Street came along, and the actor who played the Captain got very old, Captain Kangaroo was gone.  Sesame Street was not around for my childhood and that's not a great loss, imo. TV is never good for kids.  IMO.

I did like some bits of Captain Kangaroo. I actually thought the show boring. The captain talked down to kids, perhaps dumbing down with the belief that being less than brilliant would attract a larger audience. Who knows?  I do recall being bored by the captain but I watched him whenever mom let me because it was rre to watc tv in our house.

One of the captain's regular characteres on the show was Mr. Greenjeans. I loved Mr. Greenjeans. He grew food and taught kids about gardening and farming. And Mr. Greenjeans we much more animated than the Captain.

And the Captain occasionally talked to a regular on the show, maybe it was Greenjeans, maybe not, who would sing a song about zebras being horses in striped bananas.

Today in Muir Woods, I read that the small plants that thrived all over the ground in that redwood forrest look like large shamrocks. What I thought were shamrocks are called redwood sorrel.

And I thought, "I know a horse in striped pajamas when I see one and I know shamrocks when I see them." I also thought of my Celtic heritage and I thought 'shamrocks are part of the supersensible realm. They are likely magic. I know a shamerock when I see it. And I know a horse in striped pajamas when I see one.

another ramble.